Parmesan

Salami making was Friday night. Saturday morning I got back into the cheese. I've decided that I'll keep myself supplied as far as I'm able with Parmesan, Camembert, feta, and halloumi. Plain old cheddar is cheaper to buy from the shop.

I started with ten litres of milk this time, the most I've ever used, and the most that will fit in my big pot. I used ordinary pasteurised and homogenised milk from the petrol station at $5.99 for four litres, making this a $15 batch of cheese.

You use a thermophilic bacterium for Parmesan, before I have used yoghurt, but I have some proper culture now. You also need to add lipase to milk that's been pasteurised or you'll never get that sourness in the cheese.

Here are the curds half cut:


A closer look:


After the curds have been cut you slowly heat them up to ~52°C. This makes the protein in the curds contract, expelling a lot of whey. The hotter you cook it and the smaller the curds have been cut, the more whey is expelled and the harder the cheese will be.

This is the cheese after its first pressing:


I pressed it for 15 mins under 2.5kg, then turned it and pressed for 30 mins under 5kg, then 2 hours under 7.5kg, then overnight under 10kg.

Then it went into a saturated brine:


And will stay there for 24 hours. After that I dry it and leave it to mature for at least 8 months.

There's a bit of forethought necessary if you want to be self-sufficient with respect to cheese.

While the cheese was doing its thing I smoked some chicken thighs that had been curing in the fridge since Thursday:


I couldn't help myself, I had to eat one. The rest will be for lunches at work this week.

Some weird salami

Pork shoulder was on special at the supermarket this week, so I'm making another salami. The recipe is again a mixture of several from The Art of Making Fermented Sausages and Great Sausage Recipes and Meat Curing.

New boning knife!


Makes boning the shoulder a breeze, although I do usually try to get a piece with as little bone as possible. No point in paying for bone if you don't have to.

It was a nice fatty bit of meat; I removed the back fat and cut it into little cubes…


… the rest of the meat …


… plus meaty trimmings from the back fat …


… went through the mincer:


I saved the pork skins …


… and froze them to use in a Thai fermented sausage that has a lot of pork skin in it. It'll take me a while to save up enough, but it'll get used instead of getting thrown away.

The seasoning in this salami is caraway and coriander seed, and pepper. Of course there's a lot of salt, some glucose, sodium nitrite and potassium nitrate.


There's also a healthy dose of garlic, and I chucked in some yoghurt for acidity and bacteria:


I mixed it all up with the little cubes of fat, first in the mixer and then by hand:


And stuffed it into some fibrous casings. Now comes the weird bit;


it's being squashed! This is to make it turn out a rectangular shaped sausage. It sits between these two boards and ferments for four days, then I take it out and "wipe off any slime that has formed" (eugh) then hang it to dry.

We shall see what happens. At least if it all goes horribly pear-shaped all will not be lost - I've had a request from a guy at work for maggots! Should I by any strange chance acquire any that is. He's trying to nurture some newts and it seems they need very slow food, not being terribly efficient predators.

Espadrilles

Real ones, not ordinary shoes with a bit of rope wrapped round the soles. They're old, and used to be a darker shade of green before a few trips through the washing machine.


They were actually reasonably expensive shoes to start with, but I got them in a sale for $40-odd at least 15 years ago. They're French, and those rope soles are soooo comfy. So much so that I've bought some espadrille soles and intend to make some myself with some soft grey or cream leather I have. I've been trying to find the proper string to sew them up with of and on - this project has been in the works for a few years. In the mean time I have bought a couple of other pairs of proper espadrilles, which I'll try to wear in the near future.

I promise I'll get back to food this weekend - last weekend I went away to a 60th birthday party 200km away in Timaru and actually partied until 11am! Wearing 4 inch heels no less. There's life in the old girl yet, but I really have needed the comfy shoes this week.

The weather continues to be fine and hot here in Dunedin …

… but I've probably jinxed it by saying that. These little jandals have rubber bottoms and little wooden beads on the top parts.


The beads have what looks like Korean characters on them, I must find a Korean student and get them to translate. They're quite cute.

Similar, but not the same …

… as the sandals from Las Vegas. I found these ones in TKMaxx in Glasgow in 2005.


I'm always on the lookout for something the same as these, and this pair is quite close in appearance. They just don't feel the same though - they're not uncomfortable, they just aren't as softly glove-like as the other ones.

And another …

Sunny day and jandally sandals.


These ones I bought in Las Vegas in 2000. They've been through the washing machine several times, which has caused them to come to bits, then they've been mended again, and I love them. I've been trying to find something similar for years.